Criterion honors the actor with two of his greatest screen triumphs
Donald Sutherland recently celebrated his 84th birthday recently. For an actor whose hunger for his craft is as strong as ever, the milestone was definitely cause for joy, not to mention the perfect time to recount the many iconic roles he’s helped bring to life. Fewer actors have ever been privileged to be a part of so many terrific films and roles quite like Sutherland. From the quintessential version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, to the loving father struggling to hold his fractured family together in Ordinary People (still his finest performance to date), the depths and range Sutherland manages always surprises. The actor’s talent can add layers of richness to just about any project, elevating it into something its makers probably hadn’t anticipated from John Grisham fare like A Time to Kill , to the mysterious Merrick in the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yet there’s the idea that Sutherland has been mysteriously underrated as an actor. I have to admit that this is true as the actor has shown a habit of taking on characters that aren’t necessarily the stand out on the page, yet give him plenty of territory to explore as an artist.
Criterion seems to agree with this on some level as they now boast two of Sutherland’s greatest films, Klute and A Dry White Season, both of which show the unmatched artistry the actor has always shown the world.
In 1971’s Klute, Pennsylvania detective John Klute’s (Sutherland) best friend has gone missing and the few clues to his disappearance lead him to New York City and to Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda), a prostitute who supposedly had encounters with John’s friend. Convinced that she can help him find his missing friend, John travels with Bree through the city looking for answers while a mysterious figure stalks them. Meanwhile, in 1989’s A Dry White Season, South African school teacher Ben (Sutherland)lives a quaint life until a shocking series of events awakens him to horrific acts committed by the government towards black citizens. With the aid of a secret contact (Zakes Mokae), a fearless journalist (Susan Sarandon) and an unstoppable attorney (Marlon Brando), Ben finds himself thrust into the depths of a social uprising in South Africa.
Although Klute and A Dry White Season are night and day in more than a few ways, the two films do contain quite a bit of common ground. Both paint pictures of very specific worlds, geographically. There’s the cold, crumbling structures which make up 1970s New York in the former and the politically tense atmosphere which defines much of South Africa in the latter. The directors of both movies, Alan J. Pakula and Euzhan Palcy, respectively, both paint curious and distinct portraits of these worlds. The depictions of the societies in both Klute and A Dry White Season suggest that their helmers, much like the characters Sutherland portrays in both titles, are trying to understand the worlds they’re bringing to the screen. In a way, it would be fair to refer to both landscapes as jungles of sorts. There’s the concrete one which is New York; ready to swallow you whole any one number of ways, testing your resolve and spirit before it does. Then there is the sun-drenched jungle of South Africa with many people living as prisoners, literally and figuratively, as victims of apartheid and the political regime which ran wild throughout that time. While one is a dramatic thriller and the other is a social drama, both films present worlds which are holding the people within them captive, inflicting a misery they have little choice but to live with.
In the middle of both worlds is Sutherland’s presence as the vessel by which his characters make their journeys. The actor’s characters in both Klute and A Dry White Season do their best to pretend such worlds don’t exist. Klute’s John certainly knows of the kind of landscape New York is and therefore only deigns to enter it in an effort to find his missing best friend. There’s a deep cynicism and almost sort of condemning eye that the audience can see in John throughout the movie that’s directed at virtually everyone he encounters. This is especially true with regards to Bree, whom he interacts with only out of necessity until he finds he’s transfixed by her, abruptly changing his view towards her in the process. By contrast, it’s empathy and vulnerability which draws Ben into the side of South Africa suffering under corruption, tyranny and the worst kind of fear. Like John, Ben clings to his suburban world and his liberal existence, while remaining conscious, but not fully aware of the horrors his fellow countrymen are being forced to endure on the other side of the fence. It’s that said vulnerability and an inherent sense of humanity which plunges him into the life-threatening world of A Dry White Season, despite the heavy price he suspects he must pay for doing so.
Another more noticeable feature contained in both titles is the way Sutherland’s characters tend to get lost a bit in the shadow of his famous co-stars and their characters. The film may be called Klute, but it’s Fonda’s Bree who dominates the proceedings as the prostitute being forced to face the woman she’s become and take stock in the midst of the danger surrounding her. A similar case can be seen in A Dry White Season when it comes to the character of McKenzie, the human rights attorney played by Brando. Although he really only appears in a small handful of scenes, the power he possesses as a man calling out the injustices and bringing them to light contains a passion that’s concentrated and incredibly intense in its own quiet way. In both cases, Sutherland holds on to the observational nature of the men he’s playing as he navigates each one’s awakenings by studying exactly how what John and Ben are seeing affects them. While Fonda took home her first Oscar for Klute and Brando received his final nomination for his role, Sutherland’s work went unheralded in both films. Yet the way the two projects allowed him to explore the journeys and transformations of his characters only served to show how nuanced of an actor he is.
Sutherland’s range has always been so vast that any number of film and TV lovers can point to a variety of roles the actor has undertaken. Modern audiences will surely cite the imposing figures he played to perfection, such as the ruthless matriarch in the TV drama Dirty Sexy Money and the menacing President Snow in The Hunger Games series. But Sutherland has always been at his absolute best when tasked with a character venturing into a world that’s altogether alien to him. Playing a screenwriter trying to survive Hollywood in Alex in Wonderland, or a father trying to move past grief in Don’t Look Now have afforded the actor room to explore his craft by embodying a particular social experience and transforming it through his character’s journey. Few can argue that Sutherland hasn’t been the less heralded of the many men and women he’s been paired with on the screen with as a result of taking roles that are low on flash (for lack of a better term). Yet if the actor’s choices in parts and projects have come at the expense of marquee stardom, they’ve more than paid off in a body of work rich in substance and poetry.
Klute and A Dry White Season are both available on Blu-Ray and DVD from The Criterion Collection.